Although advertisements on the web pages may degrade your experience, our business certainly depends on them and we can only keep providing you high-quality research based articles as long as we can display ads on our pages.

To view this article, you can disable your ad blocker and refresh this page or simply login.

Now, according to many market players, hedge funds are assumed to be delayed, old financial vehicles of a period lost to current times. Although there are over 8,000 hedge funds in operation currently, this site aim at the leaders of this club, around 525 funds. It is widely held that this group oversees the lion’s share of the hedge fund industry’s total capital, and by keeping an eye on their highest performing equity investments, we’ve unsheathed a number of investment strategies that have historically outstripped Mr. Market. Our small-cap hedge fund strategy outstripped the S&P 500 index by 18 percentage points annually for a decade in our back tests, and since we’ve started sharing our picks with our subscribers at the end of August 2012, we have outperformed the S&P 500 index by 33 percentage points in 11 months (explore the details and some picks here).

Just as useful, positive insider trading sentiment is a second way to analyze the stock market universe. There are plenty of reasons for an executive to get rid of shares of his or her company, but just one, very obvious reason why they would buy. Several academic studies have demonstrated the market-beating potential of this method if investors understand where to look (learn more here).

How have hedgies been trading Unilever N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:UN)?

In preparation for the third quarter, a total of 21 of the hedge funds we track were long in this stock, a change of 0% from the previous quarter. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists an “upper tier” of notable hedge fund managers who were upping their stakes significantly.

When using filings from the hedgies we track, Gardner Russo & Gardner, managed by Tom Russo, holds the biggest position in Unilever N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:UN). Gardner Russo & Gardner has a $395.7 million position in the stock, comprising 4.6% of its 13F portfolio. Coming in second is John Osterweis of Osterweis Capital Management, with a $83.9 million position; 3.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the company. Remaining hedge funds that are bullish include Richard Chilton’s Chilton Investment Company, Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell’s Arrowstreet Capital and Ricky Sandler’s Eminence Capital.

As Unilever N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:UN) has experienced dropping sentiment from upper-tier hedge fund managers, it’s safe to say that there was a specific group of money managers who were dropping their positions entirely in Q1. Interestingly, Israel Englander’s Millennium Management dumped the biggest investment of all the hedgies we track, comprising about $1.6 million in stock, and Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group was right behind this move, as the fund said goodbye to about $0.7 million worth. These bearish behaviors are interesting, as total hedge fund interest stayed the same (this is a bearish signal in our experience).

How have insiders been trading Unilever N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:UN)?

Insider buying is at its handiest when the company we’re looking at has seen transactions within the past six months. Over the last six-month time period, Unilever N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:UN) has experienced zero unique insiders purchasing, and zero insider sales (see the details of insider trades here).

We’ll check out the relationship between both of these indicators in other stocks similar to Unilever N.V. (ADR) (NYSE:UN). These stocks are Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB), ConAgra Foods, Inc. (NYSE:CAG), Mead Johnson Nutrition CO (NYSE:MJN), Kellogg Company (NYSE:K), and General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS). This group of stocks are the members of the processed & packaged goods industry and their market caps match UN’s market cap.